Historical Thinking Skills & Assessment

1. Historical Thinking Skills & Assessment September 2013

2. Session Goals To recognize the connections between historical thinking skills and content To recognize the connections between learning and assessment To evaluate assessments and student responses as a means to improve how you assess your students

3. Agenda • Penny Debate • How students learn overview • Barton framework/HT Skills • C3 Framework and proposed VA Teacher Prep Regulations • Review general assessment strategies/challenges • Essay Exercise • Debriefing….importance of feedback, productive failure • Assessment review and development activity

4. Penny Debate • Historical thinking primarily encourages students to gain a deeper understanding of the content and see the past as it truly happened (“wie es eigentlich gewese”…Leopold von Ranke). • The essential benefit of getting students to think historically is that they learn the skills and processes of “doing history” and can apply those skills to novel situations.

5. The Power of History “My claim in a nutshell is that history holds the potential, only partially realized, of humanizing us in ways offered by few other areas in the school curriculum” (Wineburg, 2001, p. 5). Why is “humanizing” an important part of learning? Why is assessment such a critical piece of unlocking that potential?

6. Learning Theory • What is learning? • A process that leads to change, which occurs as a result of experience and increases the potential for improved performance and future learning • Types of knowledge • Declarative • Procedural • Contextual • Assessment is observing and measuring student learning

7. Learning Theory • Needed: A shift in focus from How we Teach to How Students Learn • Seven Principles of Learning: Susan Ambrose • Prior knowledge • Organization of knowledge • Motivation…value and expectancy • Goal-directed behavior • Mastery….novice to expert • Students’ current level of development • Self-directed learning

8. As Applied to Historical Thinking • Barton’s Framework: • Perspective • Interpretation of Evidence • Agency • What are the challenges of getting students to produce artifacts that demonstrate historical thinking?

9. C3 Standards • C3 (College, Career and Civic): Focus on Common Core • Inquiry at the heart of social studies • What does this mean for history assessment? • Deeper connection with literacy skills • Kathy Swan: “The next conversations will need to be around assessments. Without thoughtful, realistic and ambitious sets of assessments, the C3 efforts might be in vain” (interview from September 2013 Social Education, p. 223).

10. Effective Assessment Review • With a grade-level partner, discuss some of the tenets of quality assessment. • How do we get our students to go from “beginning” to “advanced proficient”? • How do these categories mirror those of the types of knowledge discussed earlier? • How can a deeper understanding of student learning facilitate more effective assessment?

11. Assessment Activity I • In pairs • Review the attached essays, assess them • Share your feedback with your group members • What is the power of feedback for students? • What learning conditions must teacher create to unlock that power?

12. Assessment Activity II Organize into groups of 2-3 Review the questions and develop a brief/rudimentary rubric to assess skills and knowledge For the final part of this activity, review the two images on the last page. With your partner/group, develop 1-2 questions and the associated rubric

13. Finale “I used to think…and now I think.”